WOW making great progress towards Tortola. Motor sailed all night and most of the morning.
Life is good - nice breeze, mild swells, and favorable wind direction. We are just ticking the miles off to Tortola.
Here it is 4:58PM AST and we are 81 miles from destination. Should make it by tomorrow morning if the gremlins let us.
Today while motoring the engine quit. Troubleshooting found that the return valves were crossed and all the return fuel went into the wrong tank. Corrected that and the engine fired right up but the winds were favorable so we shut it off and went under sail completely.
This afternoon we hooked one fish but it broke the leader. Then when I quit my shift I went below and heard a thumping sound. I investigated and found the free wheeling prop shaft had picked up some trash (Plastics being saved till we land) and wound around the shaft coupler. We cleared that and while doing it shifted to reverse to stop the shaft rotation. Once cleared we could not shift forward -- too much reverse pressure on the shaft without the engine turning. We heaved to and got the shifter free. We started the engine went forward and one of our fishing 150 lb test lines broke -- wrapped around the prop. Well I don't think it will hurt since the prop shaft is still turning free. Too much motion in these 6 foot swells to safely dive on unless absolutely necessary
We are still sailing along and will only run the engine if necessary.
If no more issues we should make Soper's Hole in Tortola sometime late morning tomorrow.
I'm ready to sight land and kiss the earth..
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